The piece I wrote for today’s paper made me really happy. Too often, we forget about the hardy audience members who sustain theater in New York, so it was a pleasure to introduce three of them. I love their curiosity, their openness, and I don’t care if this comes across as cheesily gushing! These guys are keeping us all in business.

Zachary, Rosalie and Nicole have nothing in common except for two things: They’re all up for a challenge, and they all bought a ticket to one of this weekend’s performances of “The Demons” on Governors Island. You may have heard of it — it’s the 12-hour-long Dostoyevsky adaptation staged by Peter Stein. He’s a legendary director in Europe but little of his work has been seen over here. But feast is following famine now since Stein is also making his Met debut in October, with a production of Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov” starring the formidable bass René Pape.